


Tremble

by ineedyoursway



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 10:11:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5739724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineedyoursway/pseuds/ineedyoursway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey felt like a stranger in her own skin. Somewhere, hovering in the back of her mind, Kylo Ren felt the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Escape

  
_How we need another soul to cling to..._  
-Sylvia Plath

Escaping was the easy part.

Rey simply walked away from base. All she needed was Luke’s arrival. That’s all it took. The myth, the legend. The Jedi. Luke Skywalker. The ultimate distraction. 

It was only a few months of training before Rey managed to convince Luke to join the Resistance, to return to his sister, to return to everyone he abandoned. Her newfound Master, locked away on the deserted island she’d always known to exist, was hard-pressed to even come close to meeting her lofty expectations.

Each day they would meditate. Sometimes, from dawn ‘til dusk. Often she could feel nothing but the breath in her lungs, the cool touch of a distant moon on her skull, the heavy beating heart on the inside of her eyelids. 

But more often still, that wasn’t the case at all.

Luke, with his calm, stoic demeanor. His detached personality. His overwhelming calmness. 

It infuriated her.

She would sit in lotus position, hands gently faced toward the sky, her entire body relaxed. But inside, she was screaming. 

A darkness tickled the edges of the Force. A creeping, sticky black. A poison.

Kylo Ren.

Ever since the forest, she felt him. Ever since she drew his blood, he felt her, too.

And Luke? He did nothing to stop it. He didn’t even try.

After only two months of training, Rey abandoned the island against Luke’s wishes. She took the Falcon straight back to the resistance base on D’Qar, where General Leia Organa and a skeleton crew were packing up the last remaining supplies and leaving the planet. Finn and Poe, her former comrades, had gone weeks earlier, headed for a new, shrouded planet in the Outer Rim.

D’Qar was no longer safe. After all, the First Order had been crippled during their last confrontation, but it was far from broken. Staying on D’Qar as long as they had post the conflict was already an egregious lapse in security protocols; though the General’s policy of no man left behind meant she stayed until the last of her troops left the System.

Leia seemed surprised to see her land, so soon and without Luke by her side. But, she did not question it. She gave Rey a somewhat godlike allowance. It didn’t hurt that Luke’s old saber still hung gently from her belt loop.

She followed the Resistance to their new base, a nameless planet of lush greenery and constant flowing rivers miles wide and unfathomably long. Its stark contrast to Rey’s home planet of Jakku was a constant reminder of how far she’d come and so quickly. 

Often, she felt a stranger in her own skin. Somewhere in the far reaches of her mind, Kylo Ren mirrored the sentiment.

Luke arrived in the middle of the night cycle. The skies above held three moons, each rotating at different velocities. Rey looked out the window of her small shack and watched the fastest moving one, holding her breath and counting the amount of times it dipped and reappeared before her lungs started burn and ache. She was on number twelve when he landed. He’d taken the Falcon, Chewie as his co-pilot.

Around the base, lights flickered on and feet stumbled into boots. A surprise landing was very rarely a good thing.

Rey felt him before she saw him. The almost icy cool emanating from the ship, the Force moving gently around him, bowing to his presence. He walked out slowly with an air of deference, of humbleness, of thinly-veiled grief. Chewie stood beside him, a stoic soldier.

A few guards approached hesitantly, whispering among each other. It wasn’t until Leia ran out, hair wild and arms outstretched, that the fleet realized exactly how monumental this moment truly was.

Luke Skywalker. The myth. The legend. The Jedi. He has returned.

Rey slipped out the back door of her shack and into the heavy greenery. A chorus of bugs and small mammals soon drowned out the riotous celebration on the base. She fought her way through the shrubbery, feet squelching in the soft earth. She came upon one of the rivers that criss-crossed the planet like sutures and stood on the waters edge.

She let the liquid lap at her feet. Let the cold seep into her from the ground up. Let her mind clear.

Then she waited.

Calling for him was as easy as breathing, was as easy as dreaming.

He was there for her immediately, in her head and in her bones. In moments, he answered the call.

Kylo Ren was coming.


	2. Frozen

  
_Nothing burns like the cold._  
-George R.R. Martin

The silence was deafening.

The cold on her skin stung, the temperature of the air dropping ten degrees in as many minutes. Rey clutched her robes close to her body, the Jedi garments passed down from forgotten generation to forgotten generation now frayed at the seams, the rough fabric coarse against her hands.

Her knuckles pulled white. She could feel him getting closer.

Slowly, she stood. The river before her, unknowingly deep and impossibly dark, began to solidify. From the outside moving inward, the steadily dropping temperature was freezing the water. She knew each night this occurred. She knew each morning, at first light, the waters returned to their normal free-flowing state. She’d simply never been outside her shack to see it happen.

Quietly, she watched as the planet froze.

Animals fell mute. The sound of insects disappeared. In the distance, not a peep could be heard from the Resistance base. Leaves fluttered in the wind only to grow stiff and unyielding as the minutes passed. She reached out a hand and stroked the length of a long fern. With only the slightest bit of pressure she cracked the long leaf clean in two. 

She dropped it. It shattered on the forest floor.

She took a step forward onto the frozen water. Thick tendrils of ice raced to the center of the river. She knew that on the other side – too far for her eyes to see even in daylight – the water mirrored itself. 

All living creatures on the planet had adapted to a state of semi-constant hibernation. At night, they too would freeze, their body systems slowing down, all energy reallocated to keep the organism’s sole life force running. Extremities were forgotten about entirely. When dissected, animals were known to contain sinewy bones and ligaments only to find a heart encased so deeply within its core – tucked away so carefully among layers and layers of protection – that it was a miracle it was even there at all.

Visiting life forms, unfortunately, did not have the same evolutionary capabilities.

Without the thermal encasing technology outfitted at the Resistance base, Rey was left with little ability to protect herself against the quickly encroaching cold.

First, it was her toes. Then, her fingertips. Then, the bridge of her nose. She was slowly going numb.

She shook her wrists, fingers fumbling at the edge of her saber. Quickly, before losing feeling in her legs, she stepped further and further out onto the frozen river. Step by step she moved, the ice creaking and grumbling beneath her. 

A crack shot out from her right foot, ricocheting into the distance before disappearing into the dusky horizon. 

All the while, she could feel him getting closer.

Steady, deep breaths. In and out. In and out.

She exhaled in waves, thick as smoke into the blackness. When she could no longer see the edge of the river, she sat. Beneath the sheet of ice, where the water still ran and had yet to freeze, she could feel the steady movement of the liquid brushing against solid. The cool, monotonous rush. The absence of wind.

_Rey._

It was not the voice she expected to hear. It echoed in her head, rattling around against the bones of her skull in a thousand iterations.

Her muscles, slow and achy from the cold, turned crooked and raw like a puppet with its strings drawn far too tight. Over her shoulder, in the distance, she could see a glowing beam of light. A saber. Not just any saber - Luke's new one.

_Don’t do this._

She felt him getting closer.

_Rey._

Racing toward her.

_Rey._

The light grew brighter, brighter still.

_Rey._

The Force pulsed around her, he was nearly there.

_Re—_

And then, suddenly, blackness. A light extinguished. A candle’s flame pinched out. A gasp without an exhale. Nothing, nothing at all.

The darkness clung to Rey. She began to breathe erratically, in fits and spurts. Questions thundered through her mind, burrowed holes in her brain. Had she made a mistake? Had this been for naught? What was she truly doing at all?

“Luke,” she tried to call, her voice nothing but a hoarse gasp, her vocal chords paralyzed in the cold. “Luke.” A dying whisper.

Her muscles weren’t responding. She was cold as ice, cold as death.

Gentle as a feather in a light breeze, she fell sideways, head on the ice. Above her, the three moons rotated. In, out, dip, dance. One, two, twelve, fifteen. Everything frozen, everything burnt. 

She felt him getting closer.

Closer.

Closer still.

He was there. Kylo Ren was there.

Rey was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! didn't expect anyone to. blows my mind.


	3. Lullaby

  
_Ring-a-round the rosie,_  
_A pocket full of posies,_  
_Ashes! Ashes!_  
_We all fall down._  
-Nursery Rhyme

Distantly, she heard a lullaby.

Something she hadn’t heard in years, what felt like lifetimes. A tinkling melody with discordant beats -- intended for a child with dark undercurrents. A lilting number warning of the perils of communicable disease, a promise from a parent to a child of protection, of love, of warmth.

She felt as though she were under a heavy current. The music began to warble, noise attempting to permeate the deep water. She called to her limbs but they would not move, could not move. As the music grew quieter, a feeling in her chest grew impossible to ignore.

It was a satisfying heat - an almost nostalgic, tender comfort. Her chest felt like home. Like a mother’s gentle kiss. Like fresh-baked cookies. Like a lover’s embrace.

The feeling grew stronger, wider until it travelled away from her chest, down into her stomach, her kneecaps, the very tips of her toes. As her body warmed, the darkness began to creep away. The thick blackness that surrounded her seemed to grow white hot.

In her ears, the lullaby became clearer. Louder. The water pushed away and she was blind again - only now it wasn’t dark, it was simply too bright. 

She blinked, willing her eyes to focus. Before her, she saw a brilliant sun - whites, yellows, reds. As she stared at the light, it slowly began to eclipse. She opened her mouth to protest, craving the desperate warmth it provided, only to find her mouth so parched she couldn’t utter a single word.

The lullaby faded into a mechanical melody - the sounds now an intersection of warning signs, notifications, protocols, all intermixed. Beneath her she felt cool metal, stiff against her spine. She relied heavily on the warmth still growing in her chest, in the sweet comfort of home she felt there.

She squinted, struggling to make out the black figure now entirely blocking the sun. 

A few more blinks and she saw him - Kylo Ren, his figure cloaked in black, his face covered by his mask, staring down at her. Her eyes travelled down his body, slowly and desperately trying to remember what it was that brought her to this situation.

There were flickers here and there. Of the Resistance base. Of a fierce cold. Of Luke’s lightsaber. And then nothing - no one.

One of Kylo’s gloved hands rested on the floor by her face. He kneeled before her, arched over her. The other, glove off, skin as pale as moonlight, rested against her bare chest.

He seemed to register the moment she regained true consciousness and withdrew, taking three quick steps backward and removing his hand in the process. Immediately, the warmth - the home, the flesh - disappeared. In its place left a gaping hole. 

A florescent light shone directly into her face, a spotlight hung from the ceiling of the ship. She was curled up on the ground in her Jedi garb, fingers and toes still numb. They were in a back room, far away from the cockpit. It was a functional room - perhaps meant for meetings between crewmates. Three metal chairs sat in a half circle. The walls were undecorated and stale. 

“You were too cold when I found you. I thought you might be dead,” Kylo said suddenly, his voice almost bored. He systematically returned the glove to his hand, checking each fingertip with surgeon’s precision.

She opened her mouth to respond but found her vocal cords still frozen and raw. 

“Foolish to call me straight to the new Resistance base, don’t you think?” he asked, walking away from her now. His voice was distorted through the mask - a Kylo Ren she had met before. A lifeless disguise meant to inspire fear, to assume inhumanity. 

For what are men but men? 

Men do not rule galaxies. Ideas do. The darkness. The light.

“I could go right back to our own base now. Tell Hux exactly where you all are hiding,” he continued to talk as if speaking to a large crowd, delivering an award-winning monologue. “Sure, we’re still rebuilding after our last…” He cleared his throat. “Mishap.”

He waved his hand in the air as if this were nothing but a trifle, a mere stepping stone, an expected event.

“But we must have enough stormtroopers to put up a worthy fight. Hux tends to ensure that we’re always well stocked, you could say,” he continued. "Though," he paused to think, "I don't tend to engage unless the odds are well and truly in our favor. I'm not foolish. No need to risk all that we've built."

Rey struggled to push herself up to a sitting position. Tentatively, she reached out with the Force. It warbled, her will weak and her focus faulty at best. He seemed to sense her actions, the Force fluctuating in ripples around her, a raindrop in a puddle.

“Tsk tsk,” he sighed. “I expected more of you, to be honest. If anything, this makes me look even worse. Defeated by a Jedi who has no mastery of the Force, and no better for it after lessons from the infamous Luke Skywalker.” He sat down on one of the metal chairs, long legs draped languidly before him. “I suppose it’s unsurprising. He was always a… weak Master.”

Something in Rey snapped at this. How dare he? She had her fair share of disappointment in Luke but to insult his teachings? To insult her power, her mastery of the Force? An anger flared like a fire in her gut and she reached her arm out, throwing the chair out from beneath him and away in one clean swoop. 

The metal clattered against the far wall and Kylo fell before her, loud and ungraceful. In a flash he was up again and Rey was against the wall as Kylo held her up by her neck with the Force. Her toes hovered above the ground. She clawed desperately at her neck, attempting to pry away fingers that weren’t there at all. Her vision began to spot, little explosions dancing before her eyes.

“Give me one good reason not to kill you,” he threatened, his mask dipped toward her. The Force flickered around them, a spectator. 

She opened her mouth.

“You need me,” she managed to choke out. She knew it in her bones to be true. Knew it as fundamentally as gravity, as breathing, as light.

He squeezed harder for a moment, a furious growl.

Then, unceremoniously, he let her drop.


End file.
